“We have two weeks to appeal and nothing is set in stone, but we are still considering what to do because to be honest we have got off light,” said the man, who did not wish to be named given the sensitivity of the case.

Well gee, this is true or somewhat true or not at all – how do you prove it? IDK. But man, this is not good for Asiana to have an employee/insider celebrating like this, for various reasons.

Three people died – one of them run over by a fire truck responding to the scene – and more than 180 of the 307 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 777 were injured when it clipped a sea wall and crashed into a runway at San Francisco airport on July 6 last year.

United States National Transportation Safety Board officials have accused the pilots of mismanaging the landing due to a failure to manage speed and altitude, along with a reliance on an automatic throttle they didn’t fully understand.

Yep. It could be that it’s especially hard to learn on a modern Airbus and then switch over to the Boeing system. People should be looking into this…

“We can choose when to start the suspension, and if we do it during our off-peak season the damages will be greatly reduced,” he added.

Again, it’s OK to think this, but you shouldn’t come out and say this, IMO

The source said that he expected Korean Air – Asiana’s main rival – to be furious with the decision. As evidence, he highlighted that its services to Guam were stopped for more than four years after a 1997 crash claimed 228 lives, and that it was one of only two airlines that fly into South Korea’s Incheon International Airport that had refused to petition for leniency for Asiana – the other being its budget division Jin Air.

Sounds kind of petty, Korean Air.

Asiana had argued that suspensions had not been shown to improve safety.

Mmmm… I’m inclined to agree. I’m not sure about the effectiveness of this old school-style punishment.

The company’s stocks rallied on the local KOSPI bourse on Friday, rising 4.58 percent as the lighter-than-expected suspension was announced.

Did not know that.

You know, there are still a lot of stories to tell about Asiana 214. Like what about the people that received serious injuries – how are they doing?

The Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA), in partnership with Caltrans and the City and County of San Francisco, has developed several design alternatives for a bicycle/pedestrian/maintenance path project on the West Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and will present these alternatives for public review and consideration at an informational open house on Tuesday, December 13, 2011, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m in the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Board Room, 100 Van Ness Avenue, 26th Floor, in San Francisco.

The open house will advance development of a Project Initiation Document (PID) for what is formally known as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Bicycle Pedestrian Maintenance Path Project. The PID is intended to update the feasibility study performed in 2001. In addition to featuring design alternatives, the open house will outline key challenges and constraints, project costs, and the development process for the project. The public is invited to view project exhibits and talk with project team members. A presentation will be made at 6 p.m. and at 6:45 p.m. Please note the same presentation will be given at both times.

The proposed pathway project would extend the bicycle/pedestrian path already being constructed on the Bay Bridge’s new East Span by taking it around Yerba Buena Island and across the bridge’s West Span into San Francisco. In addition to providing a continuous bike/ped route from Oakland to San Francisco, the path project also would provide improved bridge access for Caltrans maintenance crews, thereby reducing maintenance closures on the bridge. Please note that these are preliminary designs and that funding for this project has not yet been identified.

Project materials will be posted to mtc.ca.gov/westspanbikepath after the meeting. Meeting facilities are accessible to persons with disabilities. Requests for special accommodations should be directed to Meghan Daniels at m.daniels@circlepoint.com or 415.227.1100 x118.”

This one. All the way up to the central anchorage of the suspension span…

When (or if) they build a pedestrian / cyclist path on this part of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge (the way they’re doing on the span that will go from Treasure Island to Oakland), people will finally experience, first hand, how hilly a bridge can be.

After last night’s Earth Hour of partial darkness from 8:00-9:00 PM, the lights on the “architectural necklace” of the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge came back to life on the north side first. (Unfortunately, didn’t get a look at the troubled eastern span last night – it was probably darkened also.)

You can get the idea of the effect of Earth Hour 2008 in San Francisco by looking at these before and after shots of the Ferry Building taken by talented local photographer Mona Brooks.

The lights on the suspension cables of the western span of one of the busiest bridges in the world are just for decoration, not for navigation safety or whatever. Pretty. They sure make a big difference to the look of San Francisco at night when they are turned off.

Question: Turning off these decorative lights for an hour saves enough electricity to power Al Gore’s house (his actual house, not his San Francisco condo in SOMA that’s visible on the right) for how many minutes?